Consumer fabric care compositions are often formulated to provide improved fabric feel and freshness, and static control. Fabric softening active in a fabric care composition may deliver softness and static control to treated fabrics, as well as delivering perfume to give a freshness benefit. Unfortunately, existing fabric softening actives and fabric care compositions may suffer from a variety of disadvantages. Fabric softening actives are typically very hydrophobic and must be converted from a melt into an aqueous dispersion that is pourable, disperses in rinse water, and deposits on fabric. And, biodegradable fabric softening actives may suffer from chemical and physical instability, which requires formulation at a very narrow pH range. Consequently, fabric softening actives are often difficult to process and difficult to formulate into stable fabric softening compositions. The process for converting softening active into an aqueous dispersion requires high energy input and stringent process control. Fabric softening formulations sometimes require the use of additives or viscosity modifiers to stabilize the formulations, which results in higher cost and a more complicated formula. And, current fabric softening actives are often incompatible with other benefit actives, such as cationic polymers and perfumes. Finally, current fabric care compositions may be messy to use, particularly during dosing, when the composition tends to drip down the side of the dosing cap.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide fabric care actives and compositions having improved attributes with respect to one or more of the aforementioned problems. Also, given the concern for environmentally compatible consumer products, there remains the need for fabric care agents having an improved biodegradeability profile. Finally, there is a need to provide a less messy fabric care formulation.
The use of polyhydric alcohol esters in fabric care compositions to address one or more of the needs discussed above is known. It has been discovered, however, that certain polyhydric alcohol esters, namely glycerol esters, may provide additional benefits, such as better fabric feel. It has also been discovered that additional benefits may be achieved by adding a mixture of glycerol esters directly to fabric softener active and then combining the mixture of glycerol esters and softener active with water. Furthermore, direct addition of glycerol esters to the fabric softening active eliminates a step in the process by eliminating the need to emulsify glycerol ester, e.g., with a non-ionic surfactant and cetyl-trimethyl ammonium chloride.